Author: Mike

I receive a number of daily technical newsletters to do with my day job and it is always refreshing to come across links that take me to a more than interesting web site.

If you ever need to explain to anyone what an RSS feed is, or what a blog is all about, then take a look at some of the brilliant online videos at Commoncraft. They explain many of the today’s web technologies in a very straight forward way using a paper point approach.

More on the birth of computing here in the UK with news about another set of articles about early UK computing, Tom Flowers and his involvement in the building of the Colossus.

In a previous post I talked about my visit to Bletchley Park home of the WW II Enigma code cracking team and saw the rebuilt Colossus in all its glory.

It’s a real shame that Winston Churchill instructed that all of these great machine be destroyed, who knows what Britain’s future what would have been, had we have had the foresight to keep them and build on their success?

Here’s one view on that ‘Colossus’ mistake!

To add insult to injury the HMRC are to being told that they must pay the full costs of the investigation of what has been termed the biggest lost property investigation ever in the UK.

The HMRC having already lost the discs containing the UK’s Benefits System CD’s the Metropolitan Police will aim to recoup it entire operational costs (said to be higher than an average murder case) even though they were unable to find any hint of the discs.

It still unclear who at the HMRC will finally carry the can for such a monumental disaster. Even though the cost maybe very high it will still be ‘us’ that finally carries the real costs!

New Year, New post!

From this to to this   read on…

Broadband speed is something that is being talked about a lot these days. What does ‘up to 8 MB’s’ really mean? Well unless you live right next to the telephone exchange you’re never going to get anywhere near to 8 MB’s.

What do I get? On average around 4 MB, sometimes I might even get to 4.5 MB. I’m with BT Broadband on Option 3 and have my broadband connection with the Reading South Exchange.

Although speed is an issue with any connection, consistency of service for me is even more important, whether you have 1MB, 2MB, 4MB or even 8MB! If you don’t have a consistent connection (or any connection at all), then even 16MB (if that was possible) becomes useless as a service. As I work from home, it is even more important!

If your not satisfied, why not change ISP, I hear some say! I suppose with the high number of ISP providers in the UK today, it might pay to shop around and get another deal, but moving your ISP is not as easy (or from a work point of view, convenient) as some would have you believe, it’s a bit more than just getting a new MAC code!

Why am I still with BT? Well in the end they did fix the problem, which was in the Reading South exchange itself (despite me being told initially by BT support many times to change my own line filter! But that’s another story!), perhaps it was through my persistence of calls giving feedback and other diagnostics information that I set them over the course of three months!

Here’s some background info that I kept about the problems. I have two BT lines into my house and one is dedicated to Broadband through a NETGEAR DG834G v2 router (backed up by a spare) with only a single telephone connected through a filter (I have spares of these as well). I work in IT, so being prepared is one of my fixations – by the way, when did you last back up your own PC?

Anyway, last year (2007) up until around May I had been having consistent connection and good speeds , even got up close to 6MB at one stage as can be seen by this graph collected by me monitoring the NETGEAR Log and using a number of online broadband speed testers (Audit My PC, One Stop Click, and SpeedTest.Net to get a good average.

However all was not well at the Reading South exchange as over the next two months, connections kept dropping and average speeds became more erratic.

When making calls to BT customer support I was always met with the usual liturgy of ‘have you changed you filter?‘ and ‘have you rebooted your router?‘ and ‘do you have any other equipment on the line?’.

One thing I insisted on when speaking to the various support agents – just how many do BT have for this function? was that the agent write something in their customer support call log about my problems and eventually they started to do this. I think that this one action helped me prove in the end that the problem was with their equipment and not mine.

July moved into August and September with similar issues including a false fix in August.

By this time we had moved onto BT Line testing!! I am not sure if it’s me, but it seems that when I am talking to the BT customer support person on the phone using the same BT broadband line (via a working filter – don’t ask me to change it) surely that must mean that the line is working!

No! comes the reply. We have to carry our more detailed tests to check what speed your line can support! So while they check the line, I look at the NETGEAR settings again and yes I am still connected to BT as I have an ISP allocated IP address and an ISP allocated Gateway Address and ISP allocated DNS numbers and the Router says that I have a DownStream connection speed of 8152 kbps!

All this and my browser still has a blank screen (apart from the ‘this page can’t display‘ message that is)! The agent comes back and says that the line test passed okay and that my line can support up to 2MB speed and is working correctly!!! However, my browser screen is still blank from any number of web addresses! The agent then starts to as if I have changed the filter…! Oh! dear have I broken the phone?

We move on to October and November…

 

It seems that either my filter is really defective or Reading South exchange is close to meltdown! Finally after more support calls, stupid questions, more line tests and checking that they are now able to read back to me from the call log what I had previously reported, in the middle of November, I am told that finally the call is being escalated to a specialist team that manage the engineers who visit the various exchanges in the UK! BT technical staff actually in the UK!!

At last I feel that we are moving somewhere, surprisingly at first this group of engineers seem unaware of all of the issues that I’ve had, but then suddenly they are able to read the log files that I made the other support group collect. After a number of sensible technical discussions, I am told that an Engineer will now visit the Reading South exchange site, make some investigations and report back.

On the evening of 27th November, I receive a phone call (yes they rang me!) to say that a fault had been found and would I please check my connection speed. I checked and it’s was up at 3.7 MB. We agreed that I would monitor the speed and consistency of connection over the next few days during which they were now ringing me twice a day to check on the connection quality. As can be seen from the end of the November chart, things begin to get better.

But what about December and January to date?

As can be seen from the charts below, December was the first month since May that I had not experienced any drop in the connection or a drop in speed below 3.5 MB! This has now carried on into January 2008 with a slight speed increase up to an average of 4.0 MB! Stability at last and with a good speed!!

  

Interesting point; I am still using the same filter, the same router, the same cables, the same phone connected to my broadband line as I had been back at the beginning to May 07 (and previous months) and I have not had to let anyone remotely connect to my PC to fix anything!

It may seem to have been a long haul to get to this point, but in the end perseverance paid off. Yes, I could have swapped ISP’s, but would I have got any better service? Based on what we all read about ISP’s in the press, perhaps not.

Perhaps someone at BT might read this and care to comment.

Some suggestions/conclusions that I can pass one:-

• Make sure that you have eliminated any other suspect items on your broadband line that could be causing an error by taking your Fax, Answer Machine and/or Alarm system of the phone line before you call.
• Keep a spare filter and phone lines handy to swap out before you call if you can afford it buy a spare Router.
• When you make your first support call, try as hard as you can to make them take down all your details and that they enter this into their call log system – it tracks calls against your broadband phone number, you can check that they did this, next time you call, that is if you have to.
• Regional accents can be very hard to understand on the phone, if you cannot understand what the support agent is saying, ask them to speak more slowly and clearly – they will do this.
• The support agent may ask some simple (and seemingly stupid to you) questions; at the end of the day these ‘front-line’ telephone support agents are working from a script and probably know less about broadband than you do.
• If they cannot fix the issue immediately they will need to gather further information. You should know how to log on to your router to access log file information, at the end of the day it is your equipment. Read your router manual and understand how it (and broadband works, here is a good tutorial on Broadband in the UK. Give as much information as possible and don’t fobbed off by lame excuses, that it could be the filter, phone cable, fax machine, because you will have already discounted these items. Won’t you?
• I’m am always very reticent about letting remote people log on to my PC, try to avoid this.
• Above all, you have to have patience and perseverance.

The problem can be fixed, it’s a matter of determining (diagnosing) where the fault is. I agree that in some rare cases all that may be left to do is to move ISP’s

This is not the first Broadband fault that I have had, and I am sure that it won’t be the last, but it certainly was the one that took the longest to fix. I’ll also be posting my monthly chart from now on as an update to this post. Now, if only I could get a faster speed!!!! Happy Browsing.

Back in October 2007 I posted about this Labour Governments move to allow over 650 public bodies legal access all of our mobile and land line phone records.

I said at the end of that first post that I would write to the Home Office to see if I could get some clarification as to who, what when etc. In early November I received a reply to my questions; however, circumstances delayed me posting about this before now.

The letter from a Simon Watkin dispels the notion that was…

…widely misreported as having been “enacted by the personal decree of the Home Secretary” and giving new powers to public authorities to obtain data. That was incorrect on both counts. The code was debated and approved by both Houses of Parliament and gave no powers to any public authority which did not already have them.

The letter also offers some links referring to previous Acts of Parliament that had allowed Public bodies unregulated access to our telephone call records!

• The Regulation of Investigatory Powers (Communications Data) Order 2003 (Statutory Instrument 2003 No. 3172)
• The Regulation of Investigatory Powers (Communications Data) (Amendment) Order 2005 (Statutory Instrument 2005 No. 1083)
• The Regulation of Investigatory Powers (Communications Data) (Additional Functions and Amendment) Order 2006 (Statutory Instrument 2006 No. 1878)

The letter also contains links to a March 2003, Access to Communications Data consultation paper that we were all able to comment on before the Act came in to being in October – you didn’t see this! So you won’t have seen any of the responses that were received!

Also here is the a link to the final document that forms the updated Act – Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000.

And finally, the actual reply from the Home Office. This also contains a 14 page table of all of the “Public Authorities that can lawfully obtain all communications data (subscriber data, service use data and traffic data).”

It was sent to me as a Word file, but a PDF version is here.

Is this the last we will hear of this? I don’t think so. As the UK continues its steady move towards a total surveillance society, more and more private elements of our lives will come under scrutiny by this Labour government.

It’s very worrying that we don’t hear any of the other political parties standing up and shouting very loudly about the ongoing erosion of our freedom, the same could also be said about the mainstream media – I suppose there’s not enough celebrity about it!

Perhaps it’s a true conspiracy by all politicians to control the whole of the UK! I don’t know, what do you think?

I love music and I’m always interested in hearing new singers. I was watching some of my backlog of recordings of “Later with Jools Holland” over the Christmas break and saw this performance by two singers I’d not heard of before.

Both very different voices, but both destined for long careers I think. In no particular order.

Duffy sings Rockferry…

 

Laura Marling performs My Manic and I…

 

It seems that European governments have at last sorted out their differences and have finally agreed full funding for completion of the European Galileo Global Positioning System (GPS).

Despite reservations by some UK MP’s, the UK is one of manufactures of key components of the system and will benefit from the increased funding.

The Galileo system when complete, will deliver total independence from the current US controlled GPS satellites that we have all come to love (or hate) in our many GPS enabled products.

That does of course raise some questions about compatibility of receiving devices, lets hope that we’re not in for another Betamax vs VHS like battle of the GPS’s!

Of course the US is not too happy that another system is being launched; always a champion of ‘free’ trade, it seems that this time the US does not like the idea that there will now be a rival to their original GPS system that they cannot control. Incidentally both Russia and China are developing their own GPS versions, so the US has a few other areas to worry about as well.

Where did GPS come from? It was a British invention of course.

Decca Navigator – A British WWII invention that went on to be used for over 50 years till the advent of GPS. Many a Fishermen and North Sea oil rig workers to name just two have benefited greatly from Decca Navigator over the years. Installed in a number of places around the world, it was switched off in mid 2000.

Loran – a US development of the British invented GEE system, this worked on a lower frequency band allow for longer distance to be covered.

However, again with the advent of GPS, this system has also fallen into low usage.

 

 

It seems that some common sense is starting to take hold in the debate about over packaging of many items that we buy from food to consumer goods.

Dating back to 1960’s legislation which is still in place today governing a wide variety of foods including cereal, butter, sugar and rice to be packaged in specified quantities, new legislation will allow consumers to benefit on many fronts. For once it seems that we, the consumer will be benefit from food suppliers abilities to package goods in much more sensibly sized packaging. with out the need to standardize on previously required sizes.

However, this new legislation has to be welcomed with some degree of concern as this may add to increased packaging!! With that in mind over 180 MP’s have signed a commons motion condemning the ‘over use of packaging by manufactures and retailers”, and Lib Demo MP Joe Swinson has proposed a Bill to force supermarkets to provide waste bins for shoppers to leave behind all the surplus packaging before they return home!

I wonder how the supermarkets will react to this, coupled with the potential ban on supermarket plastic bags it looks like we are starting to head towards a less wasteful future and a small contribution to saving the earths dwindling resources.

New technologies always fascinates me. My ISP was recently having problems with its email server where it was stripping very large file attachments from my sent emails!

I was then told about YouSendIt, this is a site where you can send your  files to its FTP server which then sends an email message to the distant party for them to then download the file(s). Basic functions are free to use, but more is offered if you sign up for an account.

Although my ISP is now back in full operation, I will keep this as it saves me having to set-up an FTP server which I would not use very often.

Another good example of Web-Services or Software as a Service (SaaS) as these type of sites are now becoming known.

Based on the Passenger Name Record (PNR) – the information that is collected on every passenger that travels to the USA – did you know that? The UK government recently announced that from 2009 – less than 14 months away – all UK residents will now have to supply 54 items of information before they will be allowed to travel out of the UK!

As part of the Labour governments e-Borders initiative and probably to be known as the Passenger Exit Record (PER), this information collection, some of which will likely contravene current Data Protection Act legislation is another example of this Labour governments seemingly over obsession with peering into our personal lives.

Yes there is a need to protect our population against the various threats that exist in our current society. However, society itself will only put up with a certain amount of intrusion into its lives.

Already with the highest number of CCTV camera per head of population in the world and coupled with the intention to launch a National ID Card, the PER is yet another example of the UK’s slow march into an Orwellian world of mass population monitoring and mass travel control, perhaps even monitoring our train and cars journeys in the future. Sounds like the sort of controls that the Soviet Union had before its own collapse.

Write to your MP objecting to this as soon as possible. Sign up here if you’re against National ID Cards.

I have set out the different fields of the PER below with some comments, of course I’d welcome any feedback if you have additional information that I can add to these fields.

PER Item No.	Passenger Exit Record (PER) Field	My PER Comments
Information about you
1	Passengers Name	Needs to match exactly what is on your passport
2	Gender
3	Date of Birth.	Needs to match exactly what is on your passport
4	Nationality	Needs to match exactly what is on your passport
5	Type of travel document
6	Travel document number
7	Issuing country of travel document
8	Travel document expiry date	Will this need to have a certain number of days/months left on it to allow you out of the country?
9	Registration of any vehicle used to travel	Will you have to carry all vehicle documents as well?
10	Place of birth	Needs to match exactly what is on your passport
11	Issue date of travel document
12	UK visa or entry clearance expiry date
13	Travel booking reference number
14	Date of reservation
15	Date(s) of intended travel	If this is an exit record, won’t it be the date that you are at the travel exit point? Or will we have to submit this information prior to travel.
16	Passenger name if different to full name	I always thought that when you had your passport checked as you boarded a plane this had to be correct already.
17	Other passenger names if on same booking
18	Passenger(s) address(es)
19	Form of payment, including and credit card number	We are told by many data agencies not to give out your credit card information, so why does this need to conflict with that advice
20	Billing address of payment method	Great, now we have add more confidential information!
21	Contact numbers, including hotels or relatives being visited.	Why do I have to give the name of my Aunt in Australia?
22	Travel Itinerary and route
23	Frequent flyer information including miles flown and address of account holder.	Again, gathering of more confidential information.
24	Travel agency used to make travel booking.	Complicated in some cases of charter tickets
25	Person at travel agent who made the booking.	Surely against the Data Protection Act.
26	Reference numbers of any shared bookings.
27	Status of booking e.g confirmed, wait-listed etc.
28	Details of passengers on booking with a different itinerary.
29	Email address.	What if I don’t have an email address. Will I not be allowed to travel?
30	Ticket number and date of issue.
31	Any other information the ticket agent considers of interest.	This is random information gathering, I would want to know what the agent is saying about be, it could be inflammatory, it could be false!
32	Number on Ticket.
33	Reserved seat number.
34	Date Ticket is issued
35	‘No show’ history	If I shop around for travel tickets, how will they track this.
36	Bag tag numbers
37	Details of whether travel arrangements are ‘flexible’.
38	Names of any infants or staff in travelling party	Staff, does this mean nannies?
39	Is traveller an unaccompanied minors?
40	Details of who made the booking.
41	All historical changes to travel arrangements
42	Number of travellers in party
43	Seat information, including whether First class
44	Is the ticket one-way only?
45	Any other biographical information	What does this mean, if I have a larger than average bigger head or one eye, might I not be allowed to travel.
46	Cost of fare.
47	Check-In time
48	Actual seat number.
49	How much luggage checked-In.
50	Check-In agent’s Initials	This obviously means that the travel agents are being asked to spy for the government.
51	Out-bound travel Indicator
52	Where did journey begin, if not first-leg of trip.
53	Group indicator of whether a party is a family or friends etc.